Missouri Lawmaker: Put Confederate Symbols in Museum

Confederate monuments should be exhibited in a museum — not in open public spaces, a leading Missouri senator says.

"Our country is polarized due to systemic racism. It's time for those Confederate flags and monuments to go where they belong — in a museum," Sen. Jamilah Nasheed told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

"Let's put that history behind us. The North won, so why are we highlighting Confederacy when you know and I know it was built on death and destruction of a race of people? It was built on prejudice. It was built on racism and bigotry."

The St. Louis Democrat's Senate Bill 584 would relocate all of Missouri's 20 Confederate statues and plaques to a state park museum in Higginsville called the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site. It's the former site of the Confederate Soldiers Home of Missouri, which provided refuge to 1,600 Civil War veterans and their families for nearly 60 years.

Bill 584 also would ban the sale or display of Confederate flags on state property.

Nasheed added that if it were up to her, the monuments would be obliterated.

"They should be destroyed. We won, you know?" she said. "[But] you have other individuals, meaning other elected officials, that feel it's a part of their history."

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